President to Caesar

It was President Bill Clinton who launched the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  After the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton signed what some former U.S. officials referred to as a ‘covert action finding’ authorizing CIA operations against bin Laden and al-Qaeda. At that time, the prime directive was to capture him and bring him to the U.S. to stand trial. Later in 1998, President Clinton would launch cruise missiles against Afghanistan as a ‘retaliatory measure’.

President George W. Bush on September 17^th, 2001, signed an order which remains highly classified authorizing the CIA to utilize any and all methods at its disposal…explicitly including deadly force…to wipe out al-Qaeda and its leaders. The top-secret order was viewed as similar to ‘hit-squads’ deployed by Israel’s Mossad and other spy agencies. Questions surrounding the extra-judicial nature of this order led to the resignation of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who viewed the order as illegal under numerous international laws, to include U.N. humanitarian protocols that explicitly disallow political-assassination.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who resigned under protest over what he termed the ‘extra-legal policies’ of the Bush Administration said that ‘President George W. Bush wasn’t interested in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.’ This statement is critically important coming from a high-ranking official in the Bush Administration…as scores of researchers compile a cornucopia of both circumstantial and documentary evidence attesting to the fact that Bush’s ‘war on terror’ was not based on capturing and or killing Osama bin Laden or disrupting and dismantling al-Qaeda cells in Afghanistan. Currently, a predominance of historical evidence is in complete disaccord with the Bush Administration’s stated objectives.

Much has been written about the motive/s for a pre-war Conference on Afghanistan convened in Berlin during mid-July of 2001. The attendees, some of whom sit on the boards of oil companies, are in and of themselves a statement as to vested interests inherent for going to war.

In attendance:  Niaz Naik, Pakistan Secretary, Saeed Rajai khorassani, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N., Nikolai Kozyrev, Russian special envoy to Afghanistan, Tom Simmons, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, karl Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, Lee Coldren who headed the Office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh Affairs in the State Department until 1997. The mid-July meeting was convened by Francis Vendrell, Deputy Chief U.N. Representative for Afghanistan. Also in attendance, Zalmay Khalilzad, who represented UNOCAL, an oil-giant who sought exclusive rights to construct a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Pakistan port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, the mysterious Ritchie Brothers, Texas oil speculators, friends of Ahmad Shah Massoud who were discovered to be engaged in the clandestine recruiting of mercenaries to fight against the Taliban, and Abdullah Abdullah, Foreign Minister of the Northern Alliance.

At the conference, Pakistan Secretary Niaz Naik was informed by Karl Inderfurth that ‘before the snow flies in October’ the U.S. would attack Afghanistan from bases in Tajikistan where American advisers were present. He was told further that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were poised to enter Afghanistan if deemed necessary. The assemblage of government officials from Russia, United States, Pakistan, Iran and India, and top representatives from the oil industry discussed details of a plan for a military attack to commence against Afghanistan sometime in October of 2001. This followed the bellicose, ominous threat to bomb Afghanistan. The threat was issued by one Christina Rocca representing the U.S. State Department to Taliban Emissary, Rahmatullah Hashemi who at the time was engaged in diplomatic exchanges with Bush Administration officials in Washington, D.C. during February of 2001. During one of a number of meetings, Taliban Emissary Hashemi offered to arrest Osama bin Laden and hold him for extradition to the U.S. His offer was rejected out of hand. Today, a plethora of research material as a result of investigative inquiries, illustrate that the threat was issued as a result of failing negotiations for construction of the proposed pipeline between UNOCAL and Taliban. Notwithstanding the fact that the Taliban offer to remand Osama bin Laden, then the current malignancy that engulfed Afghanistan, to the custody of U.S. authorities in Pakistan, their offer was unceremoniously rejected by President Bush, the administration’s stated justification for attacking Afghanistan.

The United States bombed Afghanistan on October 17^th, 2001. An invasion and occupation would follow. U.S. officials would later reiterate that ‘to capture or kill Osama bin Laden was certainly a plus, but of paramount importance was regime change, the eradication of the Taliban.

The beneficiaries of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan would include the Northern Alliance who seized a golden opportunity to support and assist the American attack against their traditional enemies, the predominantly Pashtun Taliban. Unable to conceal their pleasure over the U.S. attack, Wali Massoud was quoted as saying to the Americans ‘you should also bomb Kandahar, there are many terrorist training camps there.’

Thus, the justification for citing the United States for waging a ‘war of aggression’ has now surpassed the circumstantial-evidence level in legal phraseology. It remains now for the World Court, absent dereliction of duty to hear this overt case of aggression.

President to Caesar:

In a letter House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D) along with 32 other Democrats argues that ‘affirming continued war against terrorist forces goes too far, giving too much authority to the president without debate in Congress. The letter cites language in the authorization bill that incorporates the ‘Detainee Security Act’, which affirms continued armed conflict against terrorist overseas. The act would grant the president near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval. Such authority must not be ceded to the president without careful deliberation from Congress’. Other caretakers of constitutional law, the ACLU in their recent edition of the ‘Bulletin’ opposes legislation before Congress that would give the current and future presidents expanded war authority to use, on their own initiative, military force anywhere in the world independent of the restraint imposed by international and U.S. Constitutional law. In other words, in the great American Democracy… the president is to become Caesar.

It is this military solution for the world’s challenges, strategic and or commercial mindset that the Afghan people so fear with the real possibility of permanent American military bases on their soil. ‘What if’, they say, ‘the Americans decide to attack Iran from Afghan soil’? Retaliation from Iran would be swift and a deadly certainty.

Given the extrajudicial, militaristic transgressions mounted by the Clinton and Bush Administrations and the recent raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 1^st, 2011, a targeted (JSOC) operation which resulted in the execution of Osama bin Laden, it is the hope of many concerned Americans and those who reside outside of the U.S. that Congress not bestow additional war powers to the Office of the President of the United States.